An opportunity lost: the initiative of the reserve agricultural programme in the prairie west

Published:

[Regina, Sask.] : University of Regina, Canadian Plains Research Center, 1986.

Notes:

In: 1885 and after : native society in transition / edited by F.
Laurie
Barron and James B. Waldram. p.121-38.
Examines the social, political and economic forces that led to the implementation of the reserve agricultural program in the prairie west prior to 1885. Dyck questions the belief that aboriginals were opposed to agriculture, arguing that, as the buffalo were disappearing from the prairies, the Indians were preparing to become farmers. It was the federal government that sabotaged the Indians' efforts to preserve their autonomy and make a viable transition to the new way of life.